


Who's That Girl

by Gabrielle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4446662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabrielle/pseuds/Gabrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy is trying to fit back into the skin of the girl she used to be. *Set in Season 6 during <i>Wrecked</i>*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's That Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliceInKinkland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/gifts).



Who's That Girl  
  
  
  
She’s standing in her room, feeling lost, trying to piece herself back together.   
  
Not for the first time.  
  
This is what she’s been doing since she came back (was dragged, kidnapped, forced back against her will) – struggling to figure out how to be Buffy again.  
  
Answers. There have to be answers somewhere. She rummages through her jewelry box, running cheap, gold-plated chains through her fingers; idly fidgeting with gaudy, rhinestone rings; dangling plastic earrings and watching them sway.   
  
No answers there. Nothing. Nothing except contempt for her teenage taste (or lack thereof). Did she think those things were pretty then? She must have, huh? Does she think  _anything_  is pretty now?  
  
Look around. Keep looking around.  
  
There are all kinds of mementos everywhere, all things that mean (that used to mean) so much to her, but she’s cold and numb and nothing warms her and glue just won’t stick. She thinks about what she just did and… no, no, she can’t think about that ( _him_ ). Buffy wouldn’t do that and she’s Buffy… right?  
  
So she goes into the closet and there it is, that thing that should make her whole again, make her _her_  again. The jacket.  
  
Angel’s jacket.  
  
It slides off the hanger and then onto her body as if she isn’t making it happen and she thinks that should make her feel as if there’s something meaningful at play here, but…  
  
… No, it doesn’t. The smell of old blood, dead longer than she was, fills her nostrils. Was it there before? She doesn’t think so. Or maybe other things got in the way before.  
  
Life. That must be what it was. Because she was alive before, wasn’t she? All sunshine and slaying and fighting for a future, but now…  
  
…Now all she can think about is how cold it always is and that her nostrils are full of other deaths and she’s angry at them, because they get to stay that way and she’s… she’s  _here_. Here with so-called friends who don’t get it – they just don’t  _get_  it – a sister who shares her blood (it’s not the same at all, is it?) but not her pain or any of the mundane have-to-do’s that make each day more grey and awful than the one that went before, and then there’s…   
  
Ugh! She can’t think about that ( _won’t_  think about that).  
  
Maybe if she looks at herself in the mirror she’ll see what she’s supposed to see and the blood won’t form thick, musty, and dead in her senses anymore.   
  
Maybe she’ll see Angel’s girl (Angel’s golden girl, bright with sunlight).  
  
All she sees is a corpse in a too-big leather jacket. Nice job with the embalming though, huh? Because she looks good enough to fool anyone who doesn’t look at her eyes.  
  
No one looks at her eyes. Not even…  
  
Just then there’s a soft knock on her door and without thinking (does she think anymore?) she says, “Come in.”  
  
It’s Tara, the last person she expected to see. Guess she didn’t leave after all. “I-I was just going. Willow’s asleep.” She sounds sad. Sad-sad, not numb and dead, and Buffy almost envies her that kind of pain. She cares, and maybe what she cares about is being hurt and the person who hurt her, but it’s something. It’s real. It’s alive.  
  
It takes Buffy a moment to realize that Tara is staring at her through that curtain of hair and she’s about to say something, possibly something rude, when Tara speaks again. “I like it. The jacket, I mean. It’s… cool.”  
  
Why she says anything, Buffy will never know. Maybe she needs to open a vein, see if something’s still there. “It’s… it’s Angel’s.”  
  
She could mean anything by that, couldn’t she? Once upon a time, everything was Angel’s – and Angel. The whole, wide world.   
  
Once upon a time there was a bright-eyed Slayer who protected the town from demons and loved a vampire and everything was wonderful.  
  
Once upon a time there was a brave Slayer who saved the world and went to Heaven and everything was more wonderful still.  
  
“That - that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?” Tara has no idea what she just said, the dreams and fantasies she’s just assailed, and Buffy wants to lash out at her, but Tara’s eyes are wide and guileless behind that hair and her head is cocked to the side and she’s…   
  
… Innocent. Buffy can’t attack that. Someone should be pure.  
  
She was once, wasn’t she?  
  
Besides, Tara’s right. “Yeah, it was a long time ago.” It was yesterday. It was a century ago. It never happened at all. She loves him still. She isn’t that girl anymore.  
  
“So it’s yours now,” Tara says, her tone verging on sprightly, as if it’s the most logical statement in the world.  
  
She could argue, but instead she says, “I guess so.”  
  
“It looks good on you, you know. I mean, it’s a good look for you. Bad-ass.” Tara ducks her head, shy as always, and Buffy realizes this is one of the longest conversations they’ve ever had, at least the longest one that wasn’t about an apocalypse or Dawn or…  
  
“It’s okay. You leaving, I mean. I can see why…”  
  
“I love her,” Tara blurts out. “It isn’t that I don’t. It’s just…”  
  
“You don’t have to apologize.” Amazingly, she means that. Yes, she loves Willow too – in a totally different way, of course – but that doesn’t mean… She has no idea what it means, just that she thinks it’s okay for Tara to do what she has to do to be happy.  
  
And you know, maybe  _that’s_  what it means.  
  
But now? Now she has no idea what to say. Neither does Tara. When they’re not Willow’s best friend and girlfriend, who are they? Which is just a variation on the question she’s been asking herself since she came back.  
  
Then, suddenly and without realizing she was going to do it, she takes off the jacket and hands it to Tara. “Try it on.”  
  
Eyes wide and questioning, but then Tara does as she… ordered? She didn’t mean it that way, but there should have been a ‘please’ or an ‘if you want to’ or something.   
  
And now, Tara’s in front of her, standing just-that-much-straighter and her hair is almost out of her face and… She looks good. Almost-confident. Maybe on her way to bad-ass. Someday, anyway. “Does it smell like anything?” Buffy asks and the eyes go even more puzzled. “Weird question. Sorry.”  
  
“Like leather.”   
  
Somehow that finishes what Buffy never meant to start. “Keep it,” she says. “It looks better on you.” Tara’s about to demur but Buffy won’t have it. “I needed an excuse to go shopping anyway,” which is a silly thing to say, but then her eyes meet Tara’s…  
  
Tara looks… and Tara sees. “Thanks,” she says, though Buffy thinks maybe  _she_  should be the one saying it. “If you need to talk… I mean…”  
  
“Yeah.” It’s one casual word, but it contains worlds.   
  
A moment later, Tara is gone.  
  
The jacket is gone.  
  
Angel is gone.  
  
Except…  
  
He’s been gone for a long time, hasn’t he? Just like the girl he loved.  
  
She breathes deep and deliberately. Her lungs take it in as if it’s the first breath she ever drew.  
  
All she can smell is air freshener and dust bunnies and the fabric softener Dawn always uses too much of when she does the laundry.  
  
So she grabs her purse and the money that’s supposed to be paying for food or insurance or… something, and she heads for the mall.   
  
There’s a new girl in town and Buffy’s going to buy her a jacket.  
  
  
  
The End.


End file.
